Live Fire Drills for Law Enforcement Training

In the following video are three different training scenarios that Loadout Room writer, Wes Nanny goes through during his firearms training sessions at the local Law Enforcement agency he works for.

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1st Drill

Just like running and lifting weights, it’s important to warm up before you shoot too. You should run some simple drills to get you ready to go to include all the weapons that you are going to be utilizing during your training. The video shows some of the drills I do every time before I start my real training drills.

3-5 rounds of each of the following:

1. Pistol from the holster, single shot on steel2. Pistol from the holster, double tap on steel3. Rifle to pistol transition, single rifle shot on paper, run dry, transition, single pistol shot on steel.4. Rifle to pistol transition, double tap rifle on paper, transition, single pistol shot on steel.

Remember to set your rifle mags up so that you run dry before your transition, that way you correlate the feel of running dry on your rifle with the transitioning to your pistol. Use a shot timer to push yourself. Some other things I like to do is mix some reloads into it too.

2nd Drill

Traffic stops are one of the most dangerous things a law enforcement Officer can do. With that in mind, there are drills that you can do in order to train for that specific situation. In this video, we are running a drill as if we are conducting a real traffic approach. We make our approach and utilize a shot timer to indicate when the “suspect” exhibits a weapon. We also add a little audible recognition by stating out loud, between 1 and 5, how many shots are to be fired. We move off the “X” and engage the threat in the seat. In this case, we put a target in the seat so that we could assess our shots afterward.

3rd Drill

The final drill we ran, in the video below, revolves around fighting using the most common cover around, vehicles. Vehicles are everywhere and chances are, if you get in a gunfight in the U.S, you will be close enough to a vehicle to use if to your advantage. In the drill below, we set up five steel targets approximately 7-10 yards from the vehicle. One at the 9 O’Clock position, 11 O’Clock, 12 O’Clock, 1 O’Clock, and 3 O, Clock. We started with a short 15-meter sprint to the rear of the car. Once there, your partner yells out one of the target positions, using the clock method, while you move around the vehicle to position yourself with maximum cover and still being able to engage the threat. This can go on for as long as you want. We also ran it with a rifle and pistol transition. Another twist we threw in was randomly loading each other’s magazines so that you have to conduct an unexpected reload at some point during the drill.

Author – Wes Nanny is a former Marine with combat deployments to Afghanistan. He is currently serving in local law enforcement in Texas.